I thought I was going to be able to share this Guardian piece about ferocious abortion restrictions in Arizona as just that, but alas it was not to be. About halfway through:

Amid the confusion, some Arizona abortion providers resumed work in July 2022. But in September, a court reinstated the 1864 ban. For about two weeks, until a state appeals court order halted the ban, abortion providers were once again unable to offer the procedure.

What is clear is that abortions are currently outlawed past 15 weeks in Arizona. A near-total ban, Taylor said, would push pregnant people in the state to a breaking point.

Thud. Sigh.

I wonder if that really is what she said. I wonder if the Guardian changed one little word for her.

“We have an exploding homeless and drug-using population here,” Taylor said. She added that she was starting to see people terminate pregnancies they would otherwise keep out of fear of something going wrong later in pregnancy when an abortion would not be legal. “To have people be forced to continue pregnancies and bear children without the resources to help – I just think we’re creating conditions of misery.”

The consequences of a near-total ban in Arizona could also reverberate across the south-west. While most of Goodrick’s patients are from Arizona, she estimates that about 10 to 20 Texans come to her clinic each month for abortions.

Such creativity – people, patients, Texans.

One of the justices who was originally set to rule on the 1864 ban, Bill Montgomery, said in a 2017 Facebook post that Planned Parenthood “is responsible for the greatest genocide known to man”, the Phoenix New Times reported in 2019. Montgomery has also said that abortion should only be allowed when a pregnancy threatens someone’s health or life and that the “unborn are entitled to the same degree of protection as anyone else”.

Someone’s health or life? But whose? Some random person in North Dakota, perhaps?

Oddly, though, the Guardian does allow the w word the last word – the very last paragraph of the longish article is:

“It would definitely push us over the edge. My motto would be just burn it all down,” Goodrick said. “I really, truly believe that the people of Arizona do not want a total ban. We’re not going to go back to 1864, where women were property.”

Not patients, not people, not Texans; women.